Greenhouse Liberated

With the Cabbage Palm moved to the arboretum, the plants in the NE corner of the greenhouse have room to breathe. 

The Philodendron Xanadu, previously buried behind the giant cabbage palm, now has the corner to itself.

Flowers of the P. Xanadu

Even the owl is now visible

 This tree still reaches the ceiling, but now its flowers can be seen.

This epi is not in that corner, but it seems more visible  anyway.

This cymbidium is on its fifth stalk of flowers this winter and is happy to be free of the giant palm hovering over that entire end of the greenhouse.

Outdoors is not yet as happy a story. Overnight, wind broke the tallest piece of the cabbage palm so we made more pieces and root toned them. Johnny tied blue flags (old t-shirts) around the tree pieces and their stabilizing fence posts. It's not a beautiful grove of palms yet but we have hopes...

Nearby, the Camas is just beginning to bloom... lifting everyone's spirits.

 

New Zealand Cabbage Palm

The huge tree -like plant in the greenhouse was too tall for the two story ceiling so it bent over and crawled above the bars that other plants hung from and spread it's enormous sword-like leaves over everything in its path. I do not know where I got it originally and do not know what it is, other than way too big now for the greenhouse. So I researched online and *think* it is a New Zealand Cabbage Palm, Cordyline australis. Wikipedia says: Cordyline australis grows up to 20 metres (66 feet) tall with a stout trunk 1.5 to 2 m (4 ft 11 in to 6 ft 7 in) in diameter. That is way too tall for our greenhouse. So...

We maneuvered it outside and into the bucket of the tractor with me standing in the bucket holding on to it. Of course, it broke off, so we then had two pieces to transport to the arboretum's Australia section, soon to be the Australia/New Zealand section. By the time we got the first piece in the ground, there were four pieces to plant. So we now have a grove of Cabbage Palms, all root-toned and hopefully eager to sprout roots. 

Here are the photos of our New Zealand Cabbage Palm grove... well, first the tree inside the greenhouse before the transfer...

It started up from the pot with a bare stem, looking innocent enough...

Then made leaves as it climbed ever higher with  side branches along the way...

Until it went over the bar on the ceiling that other plants hang from... crushing everything in its path...

...and was carried off in the tractor bucket in pieces after the soft stem (trunk?) broke when we moved it...

Maybe you can see the curved piece in front of the tractor below and the well-leafed piece to the left of the tractor. 

Johnny, of course, did most of the digging and planting. Below he is planting the broken top. Every piece was root-toned and planted. The tall trees in the background are Eucalyptus. They are very happy here. I hope the cabbage palm pieces (if that's what it is) will be happy, too. They are said to live along the west coast from California northward into Canada.

I'll get photos soon of the liberated plants in the greenhouse. I think they are relieved and happy.

 

 

APRIL SHOWERS

 April has had plenty of showers so far... and frost. Spring has been slow to arrive. The daffodils are finally blooming well and the grass is growing. I am very slowly liberating the garden and flower beds of their winter's accumulation of weeds. 

The lawn llama celebrated Easter

 

My quarterly beach walk for CoastWatch from McPhillips Park was on March 18. I always check on the Black Oystercatchers that I monitor at this site beginning in May.

Always some hang gliders on nice days.

Johnny checked on eagle nests while I hiked the beach. And found one at Sitka Sedge.

 

A week later, he headed for California. The only photos are from Munazza and Steve while he was there helping with a Ren Xue project. He left here on March 25th, going to Munazza's sister Faiza's home first for projects there (and lots of food... he seems to eat his way through California visits). Then onward to San Carlos and a big project there. He arrived home on April 4th. Here are the photos from the San Carlos clan...

This is the backdrop he engineered for the Ren Xue retreat Munazza and Kestrel are working at. It had to be designed so that it could be taken down, packed and shipped to wherever the retreat is in the U.S. each time. He says it took a lot of head scratching to get it to work. It extends upward 12 feet

And here is the San Carlos clan, from left to right Jupiter (the dog), Kestrel 17, Munazza, Cedrus 15, Johnny, and Steve. Our kids and grandkids have seriously outgrown us.

While Johnny was gone, I was goat-keeping. So far we have had 3 does kid with a total of 7 kids, 6 bucklings and 1 doeling. They all look identical.

The only way I can tell them apart is by very tiny collars... blue for one set, red for another and none for the last. Since I leave babies with their moms and the moms have no trouble telling their children apart, I trust that everyone is nursing from their own moms.

The big news across the U.S. was the total eclipse on April 8, which we saw none of since we were far outside the range where totality would be seen and it was cloudy besides. Our lawn llama was taking no chances and wore eclipse glasses.

 

 Happy Spring!